Lear destroyed many of Washington's letters and diary entries, which he had possession of for about a year after Washington's death. Lear was to work on a Washington biography with Bushrod Washington, a Washington nephew, who had contacted Lear about collecting Washington's papers and collaborating on a Washington biography. Swaths of Washington's diary (especially sections during the presidency and the American Revolutionary War) and a few key letters were discovered missing about a year after their transfer to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, who had instead volunteered to write the biography. Lear denied destroying any papers in a long letter to Marshall; however, Lear's own correspondence casts this into doubt. Lear wrote Alexander Hamilton offering to suppress Washington documents: "There are as you well know among the several letters and papers many which every public and private consideration should withhold from further inspection." Lear explicitly asked Hamilton in that letter if he desired any military papers removed. Suspiciously, almost all the presidential diary entries are gone except for those that covered Washington's 1789 visit to Lear's family home in Portsmouth. Six key Washington letters are also missing. Jefferson as ally Many biographers believe that Thomas Jefferson and Washington had a big falling out over a letter Jefferson sent to Philip Mazzei in Italy, which called Washington's administration Anglican, monarchical and aristocratic, and claimed that Washington had appointed as military officers "all timid men that prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." The letter was eventually published overseas and then re-translated back into English by Noah Webster and published in America. Its publication is thought to have sparked a nasty correspondence of three rounds of letters between Jefferson and Washington. In conversation with friends over wine, Lear admitted the existence of the letters but subsequently denied having said such. Albin Rollins, a Mount Vernon overseer, stated to a nephew of Washington that he had seen the letters and that the second round was so strong that it made the hair on his head rise and that a duel must surely follow. The missing letters' loss brought great benefit to Thomas Jefferson, as they would have been fuel for Jefferson's political enemies. Brighton believes (without direct evidence) that Jefferson requested Lear to destroy the letters and that Jefferson rewarded Lear for their destruction for the rest of his life. Appointments Jefferson appointed the financially struggling Lear to